Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

by Nadia Bolz-Weber

That year, the candle was new and white. But each paschal candle since then has been created by Victoria out of the melted down remains of all the candles used in the previous months of liturgies, so that, like our church itself, the candle in our midst has a lot of beautiful imperfections in it. The beeswax is smooth and golden but flecked with bits of burned wick and debris. Like the burned-down remains of our own stories that we carry with us, and like the imperfect bits of our humanity that bring texture to the divine love we also carry.